The blessed and bountiful universe that we inhabit is indeed rich in wonders to behold and ponder, most of them a good deal more worthy of deep contemplation than the ongoing phenomenon of the disturbing yet delicious degeneration of modern American conservatism into an impotent-to-elect-a-president ideological dumping ground of crackpotish culture war warriors, crypto-racists, religious reactionaries, free-market fundamentalists, and other rightward-leaning mediocrities. Nonetheless, I'd like to share some personal, critical contemplations on this cultural-political phenomenon of a party in pathetic decline.

Well, there certainly isn't much doubt that the old-line establishment of the Republican Party and the conservative camp is no longer exercising any kind of quality control over the rank and file or the celebrities and candidates being put forward by their movement. Not enough to keep the ultraist nut jobs out, at any rate.

This certainly the case if the likes of a Rick Santorum, who given his Christianist druthers would quite probably turn the clock all the way back to the days before the legalization of contraceptives, is any evidence.

Or the lovely "pro-life" politicos in Virginia who would like to punish women in their commonwealth for not being virgins like the English queen for whose reputed chastity the state is named by subjecting them to a medically unnecessary and invasive procedure when they seek an abortion.

Or, speaking of pregnancy-related issues, the so-called "birthers" tilting at the subtly racist windmill of the question of where Barack Obama's mother came to term with the future president.

Or the equally quixotic Ron Paul types who think that the panacean snake oil for all that ails our infirm economy is more unfettered and unabashed capitalism, even though it's capitalism stridently flying its free-marketarian freak flag in the form of the reckless deregulation of our financial system that has caused the Great Recession that we're currently undergoing.

Yes, it seems that nowadays every tea-partying Tom, ditto-headed Dick, and hate-mongering Harry is taken directly to the bellicose bosom of the GOP and the conservative subculture. This motley lot of self-styled and intellectually chintzy channelers of the unclean and uncompassionate spirit of Ronald Reagan certainly indicate a sharp descent into the abyss of absolutism, the miasma of mean-spirited politics, and the pit of partisan pettiness where compromise is a lost and despised art.

In short, conservatism today is most definitely wallowing in a slough of suckiness. Okay, so it's a valid and highly pertinent question to ask why, to ask what's gone so seriously wrong with the right? I won't beat around the polemical bush here any longer, the answer is that conservatism is essentially an expression of a siege mentality, with social, cultural, and theological dimensions.

That is, the politics, rhetoric, and ideology of conservatism are the cognitive and conceptual stance naturally gravitated toward by those who feel besieged by modernity, by progressivism, by an oppositionist other (whether that other is immigrants, Muslims, differently-hued minorities, or feminists, etc.), by groups seeking an equality that may entail a loss of one's privileged status, by a world that's in flux and disinclined to cater to our selfish and chauvinistic sense of entitlement to perpetuate a social and cultural status quo to the liking of "nice" Middle Americans. Conservatism certainly has this very pronounced tendency to appeal to our social anxiety and morph into a mindset of pure defensiveness, disgruntlement, and dogmatism designed to stave off change and progress.

Then of course evangelicals and other sanctimonious social critics who negatively interpret a changing society and its rejection of their "traditional" outlook as a sign of the end-time or moral decline add an element of pious and apocalyptic moralism that promotes more anxiety and appeals to one's egoistic desire to feel morally and spiritually superior.

Indeed, primitive and anxiety-driven egoism, the egoistic imperative to secure our own position and well-being in the world and to enjoy a sense of our own better-than-thouness, and the fear of any perceived threat to our ability to do so, lies and lurks at the heart of hearts of the conservative siege mentality and defines and deforms the entire worldview of the political right. Mm-hmm, whether latent or raging in full form, whether presenting as pathetic or pernicious, narcissistic self-concern and nervous social insecurity is the cloaked-by-ideology core of the mental condition, as it were, called "conservatism". Of course wingers glorify this siege mentality of theirs and the politics that it gives rise to as a principled stance of conserving Western civilization and its vaunted values, but as we all know there's actual reality and then there's how we self-flatteringly philosophically rationalize reality.

Now then, this elaborately ideologized, underlying siege mentality that's psychologically basic and key to conservative thought patterns is quite naturally given to going to an extreme, to overtaking one's mind with emotions such as angst and anger, and to becoming a contagious mass phenomenon within the conservative community.

Of course we all are susceptible and prone to a measure of insecurity about our place in the world, but this is especially the case with conservatives since they subscribe to a fundamentally Hobbesian view of human existence in which we're all atomized actors selfishly struggling for physical and economic security in an unsafe and competitive world.

And, more's the pity, conservatives tend to make convenient disempowered underdog groups such as gays, immigrants, and leftists the objects and whipping boys of their existential fears. This has to do with a Nietzschean strain in the conservative psyche that looks down on the disadvantaged and marginalized as weak and inferior specimens who merit moral contempt rather than compassion.

To their discredit, the way that conservatives are wont to deal with their fear and loathing of those whom they view to be the morally wretched of the earth is by intolerance, persecution, the waging of a "culture war", the use of police and military force, and other unenlightened responses that assert their dominance.

But why, in the first decades of the marvelous 21st century, are these dark and toxic propensities of conservative psychology raising their ugly head? Perhaps history might possibly throw some light on the answer to this very topical and curious question.

Some sixty years ago the great historian of world civilizations, Arnold Toynbee, identified and analyzed the two extremist responses exhibited by people living through the process of their traditional society and form of life being culturally and socially assimilated by another civilization bent on hegemony. Looking at the likes of the martyrs of Masada he identified what he termed the response of the zealot, who staunchly resists the process and opposes any measure of assimilation. And at the other extreme, epitomized by the dynasty of quisling tetrarchs of Galilee, he noted the Herodian response of cultural collaboration with the enemy, of embracing the new ways on offer from one's imperial masters.

The conclusion is located directly below

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

Both responses, in the end, prove to be utterly useless, as it always turns out to be the case that one can neither successfully halt nor harness such a cataclysmic historical process that's beyond the control of its human casualties and that inexorably plays out according to its own juggernaut-like dynamic. But nevertheless, needless to say, the futility of either trying to fend off or finesse the outcome of contact with a hegemonic civilization doesn't diminish the investedness of both zealots and Herodians in their respective responses.

Forgive the digression here, but this Toynbeean analysis can, I think, provide a bit of useful insight about the conservative siege mentality that I'm looking at as an explanation of the current sad state of American conservatism.

For it is indeed a world-historical clash of civilizations that we're witnessing in our lifetime and that is the backstory for so much political and cultural commotion. Albeit the civilizations clashing this time around are of course not those of two different races, but rather of two different and discordant epochs. You might say that it's an epic battle of the epochs. On the one side, progressive modernity. And on the other, the "good old days" of believing literalistically in Genesis, of being able to openly express intolerance, and discriminate, and sexually harass, etc.

History's fight card could literally read America pre- versus America post- New Deal, Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade. The ancien regime of Archie Bunker is still flailing away in the age of Obama! In other words, the bigoted and often brutal bygone times still atavistically clung to by some, and the new kinder & gentler epoch that the majority of us can't move into fast enough are in the politico-cultural ring doing their little dialectical dance of thesis-antitheses, working out the synthesis of the future.

And yes, when such antithetical worldviews collide people choose up sides. To state the obvious, conservatives have cast themselves in the reactionary role of zealots, holding the line, a very hard line, against society's march into a more equalitarian, inclusive, and freethinking future. For real, conservatives quite seriously fancy themselves to be the zealous foes of what they dim-sightedly see as faux progressivism, and the faithful conservers and defenders of the treasure of tradition! Even though the materialistic ethos and egoistic individualism of the capitalist system that they're such bullish boosters of has done more than anything else to undermine "traditional values".

Mooringless modernists with no respect for the wisdom of the past, on the other hand, are essentially the equivalent of Herodians. That is, although mechanizing, technocratizing, secularizing, and sterilizing society of any venerably pre-modern values and modes of behavior, and of any tried-and-true supports that our humanly-enriching Western heritage once provided for man's sense of the existential meaningfulness of his life is not actually a consciously malevolent goal of modernists, it's nonetheless the direction they're complicit in taking society in; i.e., they're guilty of a distinctly and detrimentally Herodian response.

Well, to state the obvious again, our dear conservative zealots self-importantly view themselves as a righteous remnant engaged in a holy "culture war", a veritable Judeo-Christian jihad to save the imperiled soul of our civilization from those of us whom they perceive to be of this insidious ilk of Herodian progressive. Of course one can be a progressive and an advocate of modernity without falling into the error of Herodianism, but this is a nuance of reality that's altogether lost on the black-and-white conservative mentality. To conservatives everyone on the progressive left is ipso facto working to sell out society to Satan's agenda of secular humanism, socialism, and sexual depravity.

Thus and so conservatives are pathetically predisposed to feel under attack (their own version of a victim complex , which they project onto African Americans and other groups whose genuine victimization they maliciously delight in pooh-poohing), to revile progressives, and to become irate and irrational ideologues.

Alas yes, today the typical conservative fits the above poignant profile to a T, as in teabagger, and does very little honor indeed to the memory of Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk. The "great" conservatives are rapidly fading from sight in history's rearview mirror. The right side of the ole political spectrum has been almost entirely taken over by mental and moral pygmies – with short spears, and as a rule of stubby thumb the shorter the spear the more insecure and therefore stauncher and angrier the right-winger (oh my, poor Rush Limbaugh must really have a teeny-weeny excuse for a spear!).

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

At 3/15/2012 3:17:35 PM, charleslb wrote:And, more's the pity, conservatives tend to make convenient disempowered underdog groups such as gays, immigrants, and leftists the objects and whipping boys of their existential fears. This has to do with a Nietzschean strain in the conservative psyche that looks down on the disadvantaged and marginalized as weak and inferior specimens who merit moral contempt rather than compassion.

Nietzsche doesn't look down on the disadvantaged and marginalized as weak or inferior. He himself was disadvantaged in various ways and marginalized... Rather, what you might be drawing your misunderstanding from, he hates Pity... and think it weakens those people who are pitied.. and is shameful for both the pity'er and the pitied.

Rather he'd have people accept how they are.. and act Given it without everyone dwelling upon their "misfortune"... Much like Zhuangzi who often portrays contented cripples as Daoist sages.

Also.. Nietzsche thought that Through people's differences culture is challenged, grows, and is strengthened... He was not one to belittle the marginalized... But thought they were a source of strength for a society.

"He who does not know how to put his will into things at least puts a meaning into them: that is, he believes there is a will in them already."

Metaphysics:
"The science.. which deals with the fundamental errors of mankind - but as if they were the fundamental truths."

I started reading this one about 6 hours ago. I'm about halfway through.

Perhaps, seriously speaking, you should investigate the possibility that you suffer from some manner of learning disability or cognitive handicap that impairs your ability to read at an average rate of speed.

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

Well, surprise surprise, I see in your profile that you identify as a "conservative". Yes, it's hardly surprising at all that a "conservative" would very much prefer to not confront the thesis of the OP, as it might lead to a bit of undesired self-insight. But if you should ever grow the moral cojones to actually read my analysis of the conservative psyche, well, please feel welcome to contribute your feedback to the thread..

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

Well, surprise surprise, I see in your profile that you identify as a "conservative". Yes, it's hardly surprising at all that a "conservative" would very much prefer to not confront the thesis of the OP, as it might lead to a bit of undesired self-insight. But if you should ever grow the moral cojones to actually read my analysis of the conservative psyche, well, please feel welcome to contribute your feedback to the thread..

I can assure you that I have no fear of your "analysis of the conservative psyche" because it might cause "undesired self-insight", lol.

DDO Vice President

#StandwithBossy

#UnbanTheMadman

#BetOnThett

"Don't quote me, ever." -Max

"My name is max. I'm not a big fan of slacks"- Max rapping

"Walmart should have the opportunity to bribe a politician to it's agenda" -Max

"Thett, you're really good at convincing people you're a decent person"-tulle

Really, dear PARADIGM_LOST, by now to disparagingly quip about the unreadableness or prolixity of my posts is just plain old and inane. Can't you summon all of your brilliance to come up with a more original put-down?

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

Also, don't you just lose this guys arrogance? He truly believes that his "analysis" will cause me to engage in "undesired self-insight". As if he knows my political positions and why I hold them more than I do.

DDO Vice President

#StandwithBossy

#UnbanTheMadman

#BetOnThett

"Don't quote me, ever." -Max

"My name is max. I'm not a big fan of slacks"- Max rapping

"Walmart should have the opportunity to bribe a politician to it's agenda" -Max

"Thett, you're really good at convincing people you're a decent person"-tulle

At 3/15/2012 3:23:10 PM, OberHerr wrote:So much of this stuff could be turned around at Liberals.

Basically, this is from a Liberal POV, and therefore, is completely invalid.

How conscientiously did you read the OP before posting this comment? Because frankly it doesn't make any sense to say that my analysis of the conservative mentality applies just as well to progressive psychology, as progressives don't actually suffer from a siege mentality or fit the profile of Toynbee's zealot. Indeed, your comment sounds like simple tit for tat and is hardly at all a worthy defense of the conservative mentality. Perhaps you might like to try again?

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

At 3/16/2012 1:18:14 PM, thett3 wrote:Also, don't you just lose this guys arrogance? He truly believes that his "analysis" will cause me to engage in "undesired self-insight". As if he knows my political positions and why I hold them more than I do.

The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

At 3/16/2012 1:18:14 PM, thett3 wrote:Also, don't you just lose this guys arrogance? He truly believes that his "analysis" will cause me to engage in "undesired self-insight". As if he knows my political positions and why I hold them more than I do.

The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.

I'm just going to ask this as a yes or no question.

Do you believe that you know my political positions and why I hold them more than I myself do?

If no, then how can you claim that your rants will cause "undesired self insight" on my part?

DDO Vice President

#StandwithBossy

#UnbanTheMadman

#BetOnThett

"Don't quote me, ever." -Max

"My name is max. I'm not a big fan of slacks"- Max rapping

"Walmart should have the opportunity to bribe a politician to it's agenda" -Max

"Thett, you're really good at convincing people you're a decent person"-tulle

At 3/15/2012 3:17:35 PM, charleslb wrote:Why Have Conservatives Become Such Negative Nut-Jobs?

Charles,

I can appreciate your opinion: the right wing of the Republican party seems out of touch with what really ails our nation and is more concerned with regulating morality and promulgating failed economic policies than protecting the public weal by ensuring fair and equal opportunity for all. Further, it is beyond irritating that conservatives use religious views as part of the litmus test for whether a candidate is worthy. But worst of all perhaps is that conservatives view partisan entertainers like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as de facto political pundits and opinion makers.

But is it really a ‘siege mentality' that has taken hold of modern day conservative right-wingers, which makes them such negative nut-job as you aver? From my perspective, ‘siege mentality' is not a new partisan phenomenon? The Democrats used it to bork Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination in 1987. And there is a long history of filibustering debate from both sides of the aisle in Congress, which guaranteed that the topic never got to a vote. So, the issue we have with the current crowd of conservatives may be more deep-rooted than your analysis suggests.

In my opinion, the problems of the dominant political viewpoints of the day stem from the party duopoly that is strangling the vibrancy of our democracy. And to make matters worse, we have a winner takes all system, which does not allow for honest campaigns—and just for the record, I am more inclined to believe that proportional representation works better than our current system. Another major problem is that folks disagree as to what the role of a politician really is: do they act as our proxy and pursue those policies that they feel are in the public's best interest or should their actions reflect what they majority or most vocal factions wish? Whatever the case, one thing is clear: many actions of politicians are self-serving and it seems that only intransigent ideologues have the courage to throw their hat into the proverbial political ring.

Charles, you speak of the "wisdom" of the past, as thought there was some time when the public was in some way more enlightened than they are today. But I think this is just a quixotic romanticized idea that your mind creates in hopes that we can somehow achieve a more reasonable and logical culture that conforms to your mode of thinking. But the reality is that people are complex creatures that have a variety of different motives and philosophical principles that guide what they believe—you and I included.

Now, some may view my perspective as a ‘Herodian response', but I am realist who has seen first hand what politics is truly about: all politics is power struggle, a concept that a former State Senator friend of mine called non-violent warfare. The art of compromise is ability to reach an agreement on some middle ground, but ideologies by their very nature don't compromise; to them it is a sign of weakness. Moreover, there isn't always an attainable middle ground to reach. So we are left to deal with messy cultural wars and divisive partisan politics.

So, what are we to do? Well, as a progressive, I feel that our current political situation can improve. And the only way to move forward is to identify and acknowledge the problems, as we understand them. But also to continue to speak up about what each of us regard as the truth and engage in the old Socratic method of the dialectic to find a way to recognize the basis for why people believe the things they do; and in doing so, maybe, just maybe, we can attain a more enlightened society…

At 3/15/2012 3:23:10 PM, OberHerr wrote:So much of this stuff could be turned around at Liberals.

Basically, this is from a Liberal POV, and therefore, is completely invalid.

How conscientiously did you read the OP before posting this comment? Because frankly it doesn't make any sense to say that my analysis of the conservative mentality applies just as well to progressive psychology, as progressives don't actually suffer from a siege mentality or fit the profile of Toynbee's zealot. Indeed, your comment sounds like simple tit for tat and is hardly at all a worthy defense of the conservative mentality. Perhaps you might like to try again?

My point was that I could easily make some long, tirade, with no sources to speak of, about Liberals, and it would mean just was much, if not a little more because mine would be about 1/3-1/5 the size of yours, and actually be somewhat worth a read.

At 3/15/2012 3:17:35 PM, charleslb wrote:Why Have Conservatives Become Such Negative Nut-Jobs?

Charles,

I can appreciate your opinion: the right wing of the Republican party seems out of touch with what really ails our nation and is more concerned with regulating morality and promulgating failed economic policies than protecting the public weal by ensuring fair and equal opportunity for all...

Firstly, I'd like to thank you for a substantive response, and for articulately stating the reasons that you disagree with my thesis without throwing in any gratuitous hostility and polemicism. This makes your reply much more constructive and interesting than that of certain other individuals here. Now then, of course I agree with your above critical characterization of conservative Republican politicos and their bad-for-democracy agenda.

... From my perspective, ‘siege mentality' is not a new partisan phenomenon? The Democrats used it to bork Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination in 1987...

The siege mentality that I attribute to Republicans and other rightists in my OP is something of a different order than, and more deeply and incorrigibly endemic in the psychology of those who style themselves "conservatives" than the obstinacy and obstructionism now and then adopted by those of us on the left to prevent our dear wingnuts from placing an unsavory character on the Supreme Court or from putting into effect some part of their pernicious program for America.

In my opinion, the problems of the dominant political viewpoints of the day stem from the party duopoly that is strangling the vibrancy of our democracy.

I don't agree that the polarizing politics and bitterly binaric, downright Manichean mentality of John and Jane Q. Conservative can be explained as a top-down proposition, that it's entirely due to the dualism of the two-party system (not that I'm an apologist for the two-party system!) and the divisive modus operandi of the politicians who operate within it. Certainly the manipulative partisanship and the us-vs.-them demagoguery of the GOP's current crop of political hacks in the service of the plutocratic elite is one etiological element making for the psychological complex, as it were, that conservatives dress up in the guise of politics and ideology, but it's more the case that the psychological complex that underlies conservative thinking is reflected in the method of conservative politicians than vice versa.

And to make matters worse, we have a winner takes all system, which does not allow for honest campaigns—and just for the record, I am more inclined to believe that proportional representation works better than our current system...

So am I.

Charles, you speak of the "wisdom" of the past, as thought there was some time when the public was in some way more enlightened than they are today. But I think this is just a quixotic romanticized idea that your mind creates ...

Well, to assert that human beings have accumulated a bit of phronesis, of life-wisdom over the millennia isn't at all to assert that there was ever a golden age when all was right with society. That sort of naive nostalgia and idealization of the traditional past is more of a conservative thing, I certainly don't go in for it.

Now, some may view my perspective as a ‘Herodian response', but I am realist who has seen first hand what politics is truly about: all politics is power struggle, a concept that a former State Senator friend of mine called non-violent warfare.

Yes, agreed, politics is angling for social and economic hegemony in one's society. However, let's not slight the mass psychological and cultural factors that are often part and parcel of the ole political power struggle. Yes, the rightist siege mentality that I speak of in the OP is more of a socio-cultural phenomenon manifesting itself politically, and your political "realism" isn't really going to help clue you into the nature of contemporary conservatism if you don't also take account of its quite substratal socio-cultural dimension.

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

At 3/17/2012 1:05:42 AM, RoyLatham wrote:The reason that the OP is a waste of time is that it is no more than series of unsupported opinions. The opinions couldn't stand up in a debate and charleslb knows that, so he refuses to debate.

Did you even bother to read the OP before arriving at this dismissive assessment?

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

At 3/15/2012 4:47:18 PM, mongeese wrote:Would you be willing to affirm the resolution, "Deregulation caused the Great Recession," in a debate?

Ping. I find it strange that you respond to personal attacks, but not to an attempt to start a debate.

Do you have any substantive input to share on the topic of te thread?

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.

At 3/15/2012 3:23:10 PM, OberHerr wrote:So much of this stuff could be turned around at Liberals.

Basically, this is from a Liberal POV, and therefore, is completely invalid.

How conscientiously did you read the OP before posting this comment? Because frankly it doesn't make any sense to say that my analysis of the conservative mentality applies just as well to progressive psychology, as progressives don't actually suffer from a siege mentality or fit the profile of Toynbee's zealot. Indeed, your comment sounds like simple tit for tat and is hardly at all a worthy defense of the conservative mentality. Perhaps you might like to try again?

My point was that I could easily make some long, tirade, with no sources to speak of, about Liberals, and it would mean just was much, if not a little more because mine would be about 1/3-1/5 the size of yours, and actually be somewhat worth a read.

Ah, but that's not what you said. No, you said that the "stuff", i.e. content and thesis of my OP could be turned around against progressives, which it can not . Next time choose your words a bit more carefully, if you don't wish them to be taken the wrong way, that is. Also, your assertion that any analysis from a leftist point of view is ipso facto invalid is utter rubbish.

Yo, all of my subliterate conservative criticasters who find perusing and processing the sesquipedalian verbiage of my posts to be such a bothersome brain-taxing chore, I have a new nickname for you. Henceforth you shall be known as Pooh Bears. No, not for the obvious apt reasons, i.e., not because you're full of pooh, and not because of your ursine irritability. Rather, you put me in mind of an A.A. Milne quote, "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me". Love ya, Pooh Bears.